posted 07.07.200322:09
Law & Order is great because its really all about the writing and the basic concept. The characters and actors playing them aren't really all that essential. That's also why the show has been on for an eternity.
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posted 18.10.200416:25
Just spent all Sunday afternoon watching 8 hours of the first 8 episodes of The Wire Season 1.

Complete and Total Masterpiece.

There is an overwhelming feeling of sadness and poverty throughout the series. It gives a great view of the dealers from top to bottom (with a great chess analogy that D'Angelo gives to two of his underlings,) the incompetence of the upper echelons of the police, and what addicts go through in their lives.

The series basically centers around D'Angelo and McNulty. They are both renegades in their own institutions. D'Angelo is unpredictable because he is both intelligent and impressionable. He is torn between his uncle Avon, who chastises him at the beginning of the series for killing a crazy drug addict, and later is chastised by Avon's Second-in-Command Stringer Bell for appearing "too weak" in only beating up an addict who attempts to rip him off. He's a brilliant character, as he shows how some can do evil things because someone tells them to.

McNulty is a great cop, but he is a irresponsible father and binge drinker. While this may be a cliche, this goes farther than anything I've seen in showing how crazy McNutty is.

Omar is one of the great "tweeners," neither good nor bad guy. He is a rip and runner, someone who robs drug dealers. I'd hope we see more of this actor, but I think this may be the only time a la Luther Mahoney.

The biggest find may be a 14-year-old, Wallace. This kid has the weight of the world on his shoulders, and the opening scene in episode 6 is one of the most heartbreaking and crushing scenes about poverty I've ever seen.

I hope people rent Season 1. It's a brilliant story, and one of the best depictions of the poverty and makehift society of an American City ever put on film. Remember how great a story Sopranos Season 1 was ? This one's right at that level.
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posted 18.04.200618:17
I'll carry on my one-man crusade for this show. Good news:

03.17.05 | HBO RENEWS THE WIRE, ACCLAIMED DRAMA SERIES FROM DAVID SIMON, WITH FOURTH SEASON TO AIR IN 2006

LOS ANGELES, March 17, 2005 - The critically acclaimed, Peabody Award-winning HBO drama series THE WIRE has been renewed for a fourth season, it was announced today by Carolyn Strauss, president, HBO Entertainment. The 12-episode fourth season will begin shooting in late 2005, with debut set for 2006.

"THE WIRE just keeps getting better, so we're delighted that David Simon and his team will be returning for another provocative season," said Strauss. "We share the critics' enthusiasm for this unique and challenging series, and eagerly await the new episodes."

Created by David Simon, THE WIRE wrapped its third season last December. The first season looked at the national drug war through the microcosm of a West Baltimore housing project, and the second season focused on a longshoremen's union and its struggle to survive. In its third season, the drama developed its portrait of a fictional Baltimore by exploring the place of the political leadership in addressing a city's problems.

With the Barksdale investigation concluded, the fourth season of THE WIRE will expand its focus to include a look at the role of the educational system in an urban environment.

The third season of THE WIRE generated wide critical praise. It was named the best series of 2004 by Entertainment Weekly, which called the show "the smartest, deepest and most resonant drama on TV." The New York Times observed that the series is "one of the smartest, most ambitious shows on television." TV Guide hailed THE WIRE as "smart and subtle, yet also brutally powerful," while New York Newsday declared THE WIRE "the greatest dramatic series ever produced for television," and Daily Variety called it "brilliant" and "meticulously written, superbly acted."

But I tried starting with Season 2, and it was just too byzantine for me, and 15 minutes in I was lost. I'll try to find the Season 1 DVD at a library or something.
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posted 18.04.200620:21
Greatest TV show of all time. Nothing else even comes close. In fact it may have permanently ruined all other TV for me. I find myself watching something like The Sopranos or Deadwood and, rather than admiring them for their own merits, I can't resist making unfavourable comparisons to The Wire.

The ambition of the show's creators is breathtaking. Producing an entire series of a cop drama with the central thesis that the war on drugs is actually a war on the black underclass. Following it up with a series that vividly dramatises the destruction of the American working class. I haven't seen series three yet, but I've no doubt that it will be similarly challenging.

The writing is magnificent, which is not that surprising once you realise that one of the world's finest crime novelists is on the writing team (George Pelecanos). Even the most minor characters are memorable, and major ones are unprecedentedly complex for the genre and the medium. The dialogue is terrific - endlessly quotable profane poetry.

Wallace is a truly great character, too much humanity to make it in the ghetto but horizons so limited that he can't even begin to think of escaping. Episode 11 of the first series is almost unwatchably painful.

And Luther Mahoney shows up in The Wire, he plays the coroner. Which seems apt.
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posted 18.04.200621:38
I'll probably give this another shot at some point (are my comments over on the Homicide thread, I wonder?) but for the time being, it's just of no use to try and watch something that my wife really isn't interested in.
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posted 19.04.200601:46
Attj, my wife despised the show. But she started watching with series 2. I got the Series 1 DVD and we watched an episode at 1pm on a Saturday. Then we plowed through the first disc. Then the second disc. By 2 in the morning on Sunday, we were done with the season finale. Now she can name the entire Barksdale crew from top to bottom. Like The Sopranos & Deadwood, they all have macho subject matter but do a great job of developing major women characters and issues.

Series 3 got some of the best reviews so far.

Great points, Kid Dyno. I'm pissed that Luther Mahoney is still known as Luther Mahoney and hasn't topped his performance in Homicide. It seems he's always a doctor or veternarian these days. I hope he gets another shot at a major role.
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posted 19.04.200612:35
Got the season one box-set for my birthday a couple of weeks ago, having never seen it but knowing it had good reviews. I ended up watching the whole series over the course of a weekend, buying season two on the Monday and watching all of that by the Thursday. It's the best TV series I've ever seen, by some distance, although I found the second series slightly less engrossing than the first. It's shown on some backwater Sky channel here, so I'll have to wait for the season three box set to be released for a further fix.
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posted 19.04.200619:07
I did the same as you Incadenza, I tried starting with the third episode of the second season and had to give up after a few episodes, it's obviously brilliant but I had no idea who anyone was or what was going on. Season one is on my shelf waiting for me to finish the second Deadwood boxset.

Speaking of Deadwood, possibly the second best television series ever made, Freeview owners might like to know that the first series starts on Sky Three on Saturday night.
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posted 20.04.200612:54Deadwood was absolutely bizarre for me. It aired immediately after Sopranos season 5, which made it tough viewing seeing even more sleazy, dirty, foul-mouthed, violent Westeners (especially after Sopranos season 3, in which we had the goofy Curb Your Enthusiasm as dessert - still the best 1-2 punch I've ever seen.)

However, Swearengen's character slowly evolved from one-note heel to one of the great fully rounded characters in tv history. And each week I wouldn't want to stick around, until Swearengen's wacked-out acid-laced explanation about how the world really works to his henchmen. Then I'd be stuck for another hour.
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posted 11.09.200616:25
As I said above, I know I should watch this, but I couldn't get into it mid-stream.

But I still decided to watch the first episode of Season 4 last night.

One of the greatest opening scenes of any episode of any TV show ever--great forshadowing for a few scenes later in the episode, a chilling "reveal" at the end. I couldn't help myself from laughing at how fucking well the episode was made.

Some parts of the serious media seem to be the biggest cheerleaders for the show--the LA and NY Times both had editorials praising it, something I've never seen before, and NPR interviewed Ed Burns, not so much an entertainment interview, but more of a news interview, because they left talking about the show to talking about the social and political issues that the Wire is based on.

This season focuses on the public school system on Baltimore, specifically middle school students, which I guess is why I decided to watch last night. The first episode was set at the end of summer, and school is about to begin. I expect some crazy scenes in the school. In the NPR interview, the host asked Burns about how bad things look in these episodes, and how close to reality it is. Burns said they couldn't come close to capturing how bad things are.